City cooling centers offer relief during heat alert: ‘I’m grateful and thankful for this place’

As temperatures around the state topped out in the 90s Friday, Baltimore City cooling centers offered relief from the dangerous conditions.

The temperature in Baltimore Friday afternoon reached 97 degrees, with a heat index of 105, which measures air temperature and relative humidity to determine what the temperature feels like to the body, according to the National Weather Service. Saturday’s high is expected to reach 95 degrees with a heat index near 104. The sizzling temperatures led the city’s health commissioner to issue a “Code Red” extreme heat alert, which is triggered by a heat index of 105 degrees or above.

Low-income households are at higher risk during the summer heat because of increased electricity costs, lack of access to affordable cooling systems and reduced funding for federal energy assistance programs, according to the National Energy Assistance Directors Association.

The Mayor’s Office of Homeless Services, the Housing Authority of Baltimore City and senior center locations open cooling centers on days with a code red alert. People are also encouraged to use any of the city’s Pratt Library locations for a cool respite. Certain emergency shelters and community outreach offices also offer cold water distribution for those experiencing unsheltered homelessness during the alert days.

People filtered into the Bond Street cooling center run by St. Vincent De Paul Baltimore around 11:30 a.m. Friday as temperatures climbed. The men sat spaced out around the dining room and along benches, while the women congregated in groups. Some with infants and others with children.

Al Turner sat in a back row with a cane and a sack lunch enjoying game shows and chatting with friends. Turner, who’s been homeless for “too long,” has been coming to the Bond Street cooling center regularly for “too many” years, he said.

“I take a nap or watch TV,” Turner said, adding his favorite is “The Price is Right.”

It’s not a glamorous setup, but Turner is happy to have it.

Without the center, he’d “probably be somewhere underneath a tree sweating,” he said.

St. Vincent workers shepherd the families and individuals coming in to cool off through each station. It’s especially gratifying work for James Bobbitt who himself experienced homelessness and visited the Bond Street center during summers in the 2000s.

“All we’re doing is bags today,” Bobbitt, who’s been working for St. Vincent for a little over a year, told incoming residents. The center’s cook who typically makes hot lunches hadn’t shown up on Friday, resulting in the center only offering bag lunches.

On days the temperature is in the 80s and 90s, Bobbitt estimates about 40 people come in each day.

“I never knew I would be a person doing this type of work, but it’s great work,” he said. “People need help.”

The predicted cost of cooling from June through September of 2024 jumped to a national average of $719, up from $476 in 2014 due to rising temperatures and increased extreme heat events in the last 10 years, according to calculations from the National Energy Assistance Directors Association and the Center for Energy Poverty and Climate. During the same months last year, the cost of cooling was $661.

Almost half of a household’s energy consumption comes from cooling systems in the summer, according to BGE, which supplies power to Baltimore City and central Maryland. The company invested about $1.4 billion in 2023 for infrastructure improvements, operations and maintenance of the electric system.

“BGE customers depend on us to meet their energy needs every minute, every day of the year,” the company said in an email. “That’s why we’re continually upgrading the electric grid and natural gas system to make them more reliable, safer, and more resilient.”

PJM, the company that manages the power grid BGE supplies electricity from, says it has “sufficient” electricity supplies to meet the expected demand. So far this summer, the company’s peak energy load was on June 21. The company issued hot weather alerts in June and one through next week, preparing “transmission system operators and generation personnel and facilities for expected increases in electricity demand.”

Operating a cooling center, like the one enjoyed by Elizabeth Ottey and Pamela Harris, wouldn’t cause a significant increase in the overall electricity demand, according to PJM.

Both Ottey and Harris have lived at the Weinberg Housing & Resource Center for several months after each losing their previous housing accommodations. The 620 Fallsway facility doubles as a cooling center in the summer.

While other city cooling centers, like St. Vincent’s Bond Street location, have stations for different services — meals, water, case management assistance — the Weinberg Center has one air-conditioned room with a bed, tables and chairs that serve as the cooling center.

At around 1 p.m. Friday, only one person was enjoying the artificial cold: Elizabeth Ottey.

“[I] go out and get my coffee, sit around, talk with my friends, and, when it gets real hot, come in here, watch my music videos,” Ottey said.

She especially enjoys hard rock music, Ottey said. On Friday afternoon she was watching “X Factor.” After her music videos, Ottey will spend hot days calling her friends. She was a fry cook at Milt’s Rendezvous in Brooklyn Park before heart issues and other health complications put her out of work.

She and Harris, also a former cook who joined Ottey in the cooling center a little after 1 p.m., appreciate having the meals at the center on hot days and year-round but miss cooking for themselves. There’s a lot of cold cereal there.

“I’m grateful and thankful for this place,” Harris said, who was previously homeless. “Otherwise I would be out and end up on the streets, sleeping at bus stops and whatever. That’s no joke. I wouldn’t wish that on my worst enemy.”

Harris typically spends the afternoons in the cooling center watching cooking videos on her phone. They’re both hopeful that this time next year they’ll be in the privacy of homes of their own on hot days, preparing Fourth of July meals for family. But for now, the Fallsway site will do, they said.